Friday, Jan 23, 2009
The Changing Face of the High Street
The Guardian: The Story of a High Street
Experts say that 1 in 10 high street shops will be out of business by the end of February 2009 and 1 in 6 will close by the end of the year.
High Street mainstays such as Clinton Cards may look healthy on the surface but belies the fact that, having made a £13m annual loss, the chain is having to close shops across the country. Many of the smaller card shops are already insolvent. Currys and PC World are teetering on the verge of share meltdown and Marks & Spencers under-performed during the weeks leading up to Christmas.
In capitalist terms, we are indeed entering a brave new world.
Posted by cozza @ 04:05 PM (627 views) Add Comment
6 Comments
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1. montesquieu said...
Anyone here remember the retail phenomenon of the 70s?
Shoe Event Horizon
Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing. It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that no one should walk on it again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from
Restaurant at the End of the Universe
by Douglas Adams
2. enuii said...
Have a Curry's & PC World right next to each other in my town, last time I was in there 2 weeks ago PC World were selling LCD & Plasma TV's that were once only to be found next door. I fully expect DSG to merge and consolidate these operations where possible with other similarly twinned retailers possibly following suit. The commercial property sector will as a result see further prolonged devastation.
3. paul said...
monty, I've always denied being a Douglas Adams fan, but you've inspired me to look again.
4. letthemfall said...
One reason why Douglas Adams was so funny was the germ of truth underlying the madness. For shoe shops read estate agents and financial services. Bring down that third spaceship.
5. Horridbloke said...
Oh boy... replace "Shoe shop" with "mobile phone hawker" and it's bang up to date.
I won't shed a tear when the umpteen phone shops infesting my home town get boarded up. It's not as if these leeches add anything to the economy anyway.
6. drewster said...
I still chuckle at the idea of Telephone Sanitizers. Sometimes I really do feel our entire economy is Ship B. At least Douglas Adams shows it was ever thus.